Now, Honor's Code has another great post about the addon, this one specifically for tanks. Recount will actually let you bring up a "Death Report" feature that will allow you, as a tank, to suss out exactly what went wrong on that last wipe, whether it was something you were late on, or whether your teammates should have done something that they didn't. You can even broadcast that Death Report, so you can show the person at fault (of course you have to be tactful with this -- you have to make sure the person you're "correcting" understands that you're just trying to get better, not attacking them) exactly what happened and when.

Recount is such an excellent addon, and so many of us just use the top level functions of watching the meters (sometimes to the point where it isn't helpful at all). But used in the right way, Recount provides a treasure trove of information on what you've done during a boss fight, and how you can make yourself and the rest of your raid even better.

There are couples who play together, and there are couples who play together. Jen and Mike, members of <The Panic Attacks> on Scilla-US, fall into the latter category - so much so that perhaps their playstyle doesn't accurately qualify as "playing together" at all. More accurately, Jen and Mike play as one, sharing the controls to seamlessly guide their mutual character, FertZane, through Ulduar and all the rest of WoW's endgame content.

A rare disability called arthrogryposis keeps Jen wheelchair-bound and binds the couple's gaming together. The congenital disorder causes joint contractures, muscle weakness and fibrosis and leaves Jen with quite limited use of her arms and legs. Nonetheless, she says she's always loved video games because it was something she could enjoy as long as she could manage the controller. "For using my computer, I use a pen in my mouth to type and trackball mouse that I can hold in my lap," she says. "This makes computer gaming a lot more challenging for me, since I cannot look at the monitor while using the keyboard - but a mouse just can't always do everything that needs to be done."

What's with the curlicue dragon graphic wrapped around the portrait of that mob? Aren't they usually gold? This one's silver. Hmmm ... And whoa, why does that Gnoll over there have a name? He's got one of those gold dragon things, too. Do you think -- CRUNCH!

Special names, special graphics ... Special attacks, special ZOMGWTFBBQ levels of health ... It's unobtrusive little details like these that might, just might, have something to do with the fact that you just got epicly pwned. Make no mistake: these are special mobs, the elites, nameds and rares of Azeroth and beyond.

WoW Rookie would never allow you to wander about the wilderness unaware of the dangers that lurk. Let's go over a few signs that suggest you may want to look before you leap.

All that make sense? It sounds like PopCap realized that the version of Peggle they'd created for the addon (including new stages, WoW-related art, talents to change up the gameplay, and a duel mode) was different enough to stand as its own PC game, so they worked their coding magic and changed the addon into an actual exe. And much to the lament of Mac gamers everywhere, it's PC-only.

But then again, it's free, it's Peggle, and so if you haven't gotten your Peggle fix through any of the aforementioned channels yet, here's the hit you've been waiting for. If you do the math (and chart the number of Peggle versions over time), we're pretty sure that, soon, all games will be Peggle. And strangely enough, we're kind of OK with that. Peggle is really fun.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

People responded quite well to the Patches of Yesteryear column that I started up yesterday, so I thought for today's Queue I'd use one of the screenshots of the old UI that I dug up on the internet. A few old readers (yes, you're old farts) noted that the UI featured above likely came from an internal alpha build or something way before the beta 4* when WoW went into "public" beta mode. So the above screenshot and yesterday's screenshot are quite old. Possibly as old as 2001 when WoW was first announced.

And for next week's Patches of Yesteryear column we'll either look at how the models have changed or examine a couple dozen talents that have gone through some pretty amazing metamorphosis.

But enough about that old column, time for Queue!

Siaperas asked...

"WoWHead's PTR site lists a heroic achievement titled: "I've Had Worse". The achievement made me giggle a bit; is that really an achievement on the PTR?"

The details are mostly what we expected: Extending your lockout will let it roll over into the next lockout period, consuming your instance ID for that day (in the case of heroics) or week (in the case of raids). You can extend your lockout more than once, probably indefinitely, but Eyonix wasn't specific on how many times you can do it in a row. I assume indefinitely. The extension is also on a per-person basis, meaning if you PUG someone into your 25man run, they can't screw you by extending their lockout. That also means it's not a raid leader decision. At least, not mechanically. It's up to the individual to click that extension button.

Sorry for the low resolution on the pic above, but we thought it was still funny enough to share -- the guildleader of the guild (unfortunately, we weren't told the name or server) was a little unhappy when one of the raiders decided to leave a "whipefest" on General Vezax, and he decided to pull off a WoWBash-style /gkick.

Lots more drama, downed, and recruiting news in our weekly Guildwatch column, which starts right after the break below. Have a tip for us? Send it along to guildwatch@wow.com, and you might see it right here next time.

First up a bit of housekeeping; thanks to all of you who took part in last week's contest -- over 500 of you! A winner has been chosen via the highly technical method of a /random in-game roll. Sorry to the others of you who didn't win this time, but who knows, maybe in the future we'll have another giveaway on TurpsterVision!

This week we take a trip on the PTR and experience the new Northrend Children's Week, doing the impossible and completing both sides of the event to show you what is on offer. Lesley Smithposted about the event before and we even put up a handy gallery if you would like to take a closer look at some of the quest text.

Over the weekend, America celebrated its Independence Day on July 4th. And while Azeroth may not have exactly the same holiday, certainly most folks are aware of the fireworks that happen to take place on the same day.

Maestro of Comedy Oxhorn released the new video over the weekend, celebrating America's Independence Day. The video, called Steak Sandwiches, only features two of Oxhorn's regular characters. Oxhorn and Mortuus take a break to enjoy a favorite past-time of Oxhorn's Horde. That past-time, specifically, is strapping gnomes to rockets and firing them into the air.

This video is pretty short, and has the same, endearing sense of comedy that Oxhorn displays in all his movies. The combination of his scripting, music, and voice acting always seems to nail the subject just right. While I find gnome punting jokes tiresome usually, something about the way Oxhorn delivers his comedy even gets me laughing out loud.

Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.

A new build for patch 3.2 hit the PTR recently, and all of the related Shadow Priest changes are things that the recent Q&A hinted toward or straight out told us to expect. Let's not waste any time here and dig right into the changes.

Definitely not a surprise here. I've been saying for a long time that this component of the spell needed a significant buff, Ghostcrawler agreed, and doubling its base damage can probably be considered that. We'll still need to see it in action to determine if it's enough. If it's not enough, at least it's closer, and that's something.

Devouring Plague cooldown removed, can now only be applied to one target at a time.

This is a change I long expected, and despite Ghostcrawler initially seeming iffy on it in the Shadow Priest Q&A, the simple fact that it was mentioned made me more hopeful that it would happen. And it is happening! So I'm pretty happy about that. There isn't much more to say. It'll make playing a Shadow Priest much less frustrating when it comes to encounters where you're swapping targets a lot. Yogg-Saron, I'm looking at you.

Viradu of Ragnaros was simply trying to start a hunter alt when he stumbled across evidence of a horrifying crime. Five different orcs, each of a different class, were lying dead on the ground of Durotar. The corpses had been arranged in identical positions and dumped in a straight line. The Pween Scene Investigators were called, and after intensive testing on the bodies, they determined that the orcs had been dead for two to four hours and tasted delicious with hot sauce. Authorities have not identified a suspect, but believe that the murderer may suffer from a serious mental condition known as "altaholism."

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word "Azeroth" in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

It might be true that you can go straight from questing and leveling straight into raiding Naxxramas. Maybe even get carried on a few 10man Ulduar Normal mode runs (if this happens I'm sure you will probably be a part of the next Guildwatch post.)

When you make the transition into endgame you really can't expect to crush the damage meters. Don't feel all insulted and indignant, it really isn't your fault. When your questing and leveling you don't really focus on gear much. Not to mention making sure you have the correct pet or spec to achieve the numbers published on Elitist Jerks or some of those other Hunter sites.

Another drawback of making the mad dash to end game could meant that you might have passed up on some great items to get your endgame raiding started on the right foot. Worse yet, you might have vendored or disenchanted some of those quest and reputation rewards for easy gold. Nothing can make you feel lower than a Gnome Warlock than showing up in quest greens and blues, doing less dps than the Tank all because you didn't think ahead and get a good starting raid set.

The PTR is an exciting place and there are plenty of fascinating little changes. One of the smallest is also the most important - at least is if you have a twink and a PvP addiction. Once patch 3.2 goes live your beloved twink will finally be able to battle to your heart's content, to slaughter the opposing faction and steal flags/bases without fear of gaining even one tinsy little experience point.

It costs gold of course but it's something which is sure to delight anyone who spends their days in battlegrounds. Twinks get their own special battleground and they can only play against other twinks who've visited Behsten in Stormwind or his colleague in Orgrimmar. It certainly validates twinkdom and a lot of people are going to be very happy.

However not me, of course, my dislike of PvP is almost legendary. But that's not the point. So, twinks everywhere, when patch 3.2 eventually hits are you going to part with your gold, borrowed from your sugar daddy main? Will it make you more likely to spend more time in PvP? Do you wish this lack of XP was extended to leveling in general, not just PvP activities? Speak up, constant readers, and drop your thoughts in the comments box.

A little surprise on the Patch 3.2 PTR was discovered this evening. The Cold Weather Flying training, which previously had to be purchased for each character that wanted to fly in Northrend is now available as a Bind on Account book purchasable at the exotic mounts vendor in Dalaran.

The Use text is a little odd in that it notes the "tome is consumed when read." To me that means that the book is only a one use thing, which is a departure from current BoA items. And why have a level 68 requirement on this and not the normal Cold Weather Flying training? If you're 68 you're likely to be able to get to Dalaran anyways these days.

Maintenance came and went today, and many people were initially pleasantly surprised to see their realm up early. However this quickly became a thing of disappointment as they found the instance servers were laggier than normal, and the realms themselves were rather unstable.

While there were a series of quick restarts to correct many of the problems, several issues still existed. And of course another maintenance period has gone by without any fix to the dreaded "Additional instances cannot be launched, please try again later," error.

Those words are nearly burned into my monitor now.

Tomorrow morning from 5:00 a.m. PDT / 8:00 a.m. EDT until 8:00 a.m. PDT / 11:00 a.m. EDT the following realms after the break will be down for additional maintenance and hardware upgrades. These short downtimes usually mean that nothing too special is happening, but in case there's a cataclysmic event we'll be sure to let you know. (See what I did thar?)

Another week, another Patch 3.2 PTR build with no access to the new instances yet. I'm sure they'll appear on the PTR when they're ready ([TM]). In the mean time, what tweaks and changes have they made in build 10072?

Well, for one thing, they added in the Crusader's Coliseum versions of the Undying achievements. A Tribute to Immortality requires you to reach the end of the heroic-mode raid with 50 attempts remaining (possibly a placeholder quantity), and without any of the raid members dying during boss encounters. It doesn't say for sure, but I would guess this is calculated in the Ulduar style - if you down boss A without anyone dying one week, boss B the next, etc., you get the achievement.

In lieu of the now semi-traditional Proto-Drake mount fancy title, those who complete this feat are granted a black or white Crusader's Warhorse (as pictured above-right).

In case you're scratching your head wondering what this is all about, during the Yogg-Saron fight (the last boss of Ulduar), the four Keepers of Ulduar (Freya, Thorim, Hodir, and Mimiron) help you out. You can choose how many of the Keepers you want to activate for the fight, and if you use fewer than all of them, it's hard-mode. "Alone in the Darkness" is Yogg-Saron with zero keepers: as hard as it gets.

Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we step back a little and look at endgame in the context of sports.

WoWPals helps you find more friends in Azeroth - Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:00:00 ESTWoWPals.net is a brand new social networking site targeted at you WoW players that just got a nice bit of coverage over on VentureBeat's GamesBeat site. Social networking is taking off just as much as World of Warcraft lately, and so there's a whole slew of companies trying to step up and become the de facto social service for gamers, from GamerDNA and Rupture to wowtwitter and even our own little enterprise. WoWPals isn't too different -- it's run by a few gamers based in Israel, and is currently in alpha, and hoping for a beta by the end of the year. You register to the site with your first character, and after a short wait for an activation email, you can jump in and find friends by guild or server, or punch in your location and search around that way. Once you're friends, there's not much more to do but chat and message each other, but what more do you need, really?

Personally, I think WoW already covers the bases of a social network (though in the past I've said I would like to have the option to see more about players than the characters, and these sites can certainly fill that need), so all of these end up being either extraneous -- do I really need another Twitter just for my characters? -- or just plain unnecessary: maybe I don't want my friends to know exactly what I did in game last night.

So no, I personally haven't been sold on any of these sites yet (though I do like reading through the player blogs here on WoW.com, and I'm not just saying that because I work here). I'm active ingame, and I'm active on various social networks, and keeping the two separate is fine by me. But if you are looking for even more ways to find new friends in World of Warcraft, maybe you can meet some new pals with WoWPals, too.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Since today's first question in Maelstrom-themed, we've decided today's edition of The Queue was a good time to link the supposed leaked trailer of the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, to be announced at BlizzCon '09. We haven't embedded the video to try and dodge waking up to a DMCA tomorrow, so just check it out on YouTube. We'll let Google deal with the mess, eh?Revan asked... "What instances would you suggest for a Maelstrom expansion?"

All of the things you suggested yesterday would work pretty well. Nazjatar and the Tomb of Sargeras would definitely be raid zones in a future expansion. I suspect we would also have a hella fun time in The Eye of the Maelstrom, which is the center of the whole storm there. Maybe we'd even visit Mak'aru, which is where all the gross crab people live. It probably wouldn't be a raid, but I could see a 5-man there. That is, if we don't ally with the gross crabfolk. Did I mention they're gross? Gross. I'd also lay down money that we'll get an Onyxia/Gruul/Malygos-style raid with a sea monster of some sort. The Lurker Below v2.0, now with eye lasers?

Our tip lines have been buzzing recently with news about a tameable Worgen. If you haven't been paying attention, in short, Garwal (a quest NPC that starts as a wolf, but turns into a Worgen) could be tamed as a Worgen if you get your timing right, and then you'd have a very unusual pet following you around.

Note that I say "could be tamed," not "can": apparently Blizzard has hotfixed the NPC so that he can no longer be tamed, stating that they never intended players to have a humanoid pet. Players who have already tamed Garwal will find that they have no talents or abilities for him, nor can they feed or buff him rendering him effectively useless except as a vanity pet. I would expect him to be removed even as a vanity pet soon.

World of Warcraft has been around for a while now, and the game has changed significantly. Back in the day, way back in the day, things were so different you probably wouldn't recognize it. A couple times a week WoW.com will look back at old patches, lamenting on what once was.

Welcome to the first post in our Patches of Yesteryear series. We're going to take a look at old patch notes (listed after the break) and point out some of the ridiculous, and not so ridiculous changes that have gone through the game the past five years.

To start off with, let's look at Patch 0.6. This patch was released on April 13th, 2004. That's about seven months before WoW hit the retail shelves and became a hit. This beta version of WoW had a few important parts of the game that began their life in this patch:

Even if you are taking my advice and training your feet and legs for BlizzCon, you are still going to need good shoes for all of those lines. The Anaheim Convention Center floor is hard and unforgiving, so your shoes will need to provide the appropriate cushion and support to make up for it. In many conventions, companies will put carpet with extra padding in their booths so that people will stand there longer for demos of their products and services. Unless something has changed this year, there is no padding -- no respite for the feet unless you go outside and find a patch of grass.

For Patch 3.2 we've been steadily updating WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2. with everything we've written about the Patch 3.2 PTR. Included in there are links to the latest patch notes, class changes and analysis, and tons of galleries of the new gear and quests.

Lichborne: The Future of Death Runes in Patch 3.2 - Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:00:00 ESTWelcome to Lichborne, the Death Knight class column, with your host, Daniel Whitcomb, who's still wearing mourning black for AE Unholy Blight. And also because black looks awesome.

I admit to being a bit underwhelmed by the Death Knight Q&A. To be fair, this is primarily because most of the things covered were already in the 3.2 patch notes, and the rest was pretty common sense stuff. However, one little comment by Ghostcrawler did catch my attention: His praise of Death Runes.

This caught me more than a bit by surprise, since, if anything, the Death Knight changes in Patch 3.2 seem tailor made to discourage the use of Death Runes, at least for Frost and Unholy.

Between the damage buff to Blood Strike and diseases, and the nerf to Scourge Strike, we have a pretty good chance of seeing people move away from using Death Runes. The major reason to use Blood Strike in both trees right now is to create Death Runes so you can use higher damage abilities on your next refresh cycle. If Blood Strike becomes the higher damage ability, it's not worth it to use the Death Runes on something else. There's a off-chance, I suppose, that you might want the Death Runes handy for an emergency use of Ghoul Frenzy, in theory, but that chance is so slim that no-one's going to want to waste the talent points in Reaping, at the very least.

TaintedLore is back with a new video titled Take My Quest. This video was created by ViKarious Productions. (That's not a typo -- the "K" is capital in their name.) Of course, the singing itself is by Sharm. I think I may need to brush up on my pop music, because I couldn't be sure whether the song is a parody, or a completely original work.

At any rate, the video work in this piece is pretty good. It's got a good variety of action and models, all which come together in proper harmony with the song. I've not seen anything by ViKarious before, so this was a pretty good break onto the scene for them.

My only complaint, of course, is the return of Auto-Tune. I've always enjoy Sharm's singing, and think she could be fairly talented. Like I said when Why I Raid? was released, I guess auto-tune could be being used for artistic reasons, but it's just not necessary. The voice work is great without it.

Edit: There's a rumor this may be a parody of the Destiny's Child song, Say My Name.

Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.

Maintenance time ho! Yes Europe, it's nearly the middle of the week again. I'm honestly not sure how that happened but once more unto the breach. Unfortunately the downtime is a little longer than normal this week, hence poor Serisa quaking in fear in the picture above. Blizzard has announced that all European realms will be offline from 3:00am until 1:00pm (CEST) tomorrow.

So, that makes a good few hours in which to kick your heels. Kind of annoying but it's a necessary evil. Once more coming to our rescue, Daniel W. has got a nice round up with a heavy focus on the cataclysmic news from last week. Cataclysmic, get it? Anyway, last week was quite news intensive and if you start to get withdrawal, what about hitting the PTR for a bit and trying out all the juicy Patch 3.2 goodness.

The sin of Tab targeting - Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:00:00 ESTI'm not a keyboard turner -- my steady diet of FPS games growing up made sure of that. And while I do occasionally point-and-click abilities, for the most part, I do use hotkeys. But, just like Tank Like a Girl, there is one control-scheme sin that I'm definitely guilty of: I am definitely a Tab-targeter. I guess the issue is that sometimes you do have to use Tab to choose your different targets -- sometimes, you can't quite click on the thing you need to target, so instead you hit Tab to flip through all the available targets until you get to the one you need. But that's a no-no. Flipping through the targets takes more time than you should (if you happen to miss your target, you need to flip through all of them yet again), and, as I know from personal experience, Tab targeting often ends you up on the wrong target. Not that CC is so much of an issue anymore, but let me tell you: the first time you happen to pull that one dragon your group has cast sleep on, it'll be embarassing.

So how to get it right? TLaG suggests this post from TankingTips, which hints at using the mouse instead of the keyboard to target (you can choose friendly targets easier that way), but doesn't offer any real suggestions of how to make the switch. Moving the camera back is one, getting your positioning right is probably another. And learning to use focus and macro targets is probably the best tip you can have: anything that's more specific or direct than either Tab or click targeting is probably better. Addons like Promixo will help in the Arenas as well.

No one's perfect, and no one way to do things is perfect either -- depending on your situation, Tab targeting might be better. But it's important to have as many tools as possible, so if you, like me, find yourself depending on the Tab key more often than not, it might be time to mix up your toolbag a bit.

The Westfall Brigade might need more constructive ways to occupy their time. When Jaeren of <I Shoulda Been Horde> on Rexxar pulled Vengeful Bambina over to their camp, the Brigade went to town on the poor deer, who just stood there while the guards hacked away in a futile effort to kill the immortal fawn. See, the Horde doesn't have these kinds of problems. At least, not since the Royal Apothecary Society deployed their Chronic Wasting Disease catapults.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word "Azeroth" in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all those other shiny MMOs! Check out this roundup of the latest news from the wider MMO world.

Being a WoW fan doesn't mean you're an MMO fanSyncaine posted an interesting article on his blog discussing why he thinks there hasn't been much uptake in the majority of MMOs released since World of Warcraft. Basically, he believes that just because you enjoy playing WoW, it doesn't mean you'll enjoy other MMOs.

EverQuest's 51/50 server "Mayong" is liveEarlier in the week, EverQuest's new 51/50 server "Mayong" went live. Pretty much anyone that played EQ around launch will recognize the name as that of the infamous vampire Mayong Mistmoore, a character that was sometimes played by GMs and devs for live events way back in the day. For those not familiar with the special rules of this server type, it's fairly simple: 51 is your starting level, and 50 is the number of AAs you automatically receive upon making a character.

Redefining MMOs: TerminologyAs we look back at the past several years of the MMO scene, we see a genre that has gone through significant evolutionary leaps. With those pioneering days of text MUDs and blocky graphics behind us, today we enjoy professionally developed games with impressive development teams and massive budgets behind them. The genre's depths have been thoroughly explored and we've even categorised the features we've come to love and expect from our favourite online retreats. Every part of the genre, from the types of gameplay available to the terminology we use, has been routinely evolving and redefining itself over time.

Massively's DDO Unlimited developer tourLove can sometimes be a fickle thing, but I'm pretty sure that I love what Turbine has done with the DDO Store in Dungeons and Dragons Online Unlimited. I'll admit that initially I was a little concerned with the concept of an in-game store, but after playing with it at bit and asking some questions my fears have pretty much melted away.

AddOns are great. We all use them and they enhance game play. Indeed as we've seen from sites like Curse there's a thriving trade. The thing is a lot of newer MMOs, most notably Aion, have everything that AddOns provide and a bit more built in. While Blizzard is starting to cotton on with the introduction of their own threat meter and quest tracker, there's still a long way to go. Perhaps the most notable change in this direction is the promise of a somewhat basic quest helper in 3.2. Now I've been using the actual QuestHelper for quite a long time (indeed it's one of my essential AddOns) and from what I've seen of Blizzard's version, they have a long way to go.

But, it's a start. In the past year Blizzard seem to have finally realised that their player base like the perks of AddOns and the way they enhance the game, but not the frequent updating which is required with every major patch. So readers, what are your thoughts on the whole Blizzard/AddOn thing? Do you think they are just taking the best ideas and adapting the most popular AddOns into their own versions? Do you prefer using AddOns like Omen and QuestHelper? Do you see yourself using them for a long time yet? What would you like to see AddOn-esque feature would you like Blizzard to implement next?

The big news, of course, is the Cataclysm. Blizzard went on a trademark registering spree around this word, which has everyone abuzz with speculation. Are we seeing the name of the new, maelstrom-related expansion? Or is this another secret project, perhaps even that new top secret MMO? Only time will tell, but it's fun to guess anyway. Once you're done being all atwitter over that little bit of gossip, here's some more stuff to read until your server comes up:

Which is why I was surprised to read this post over on Mystic Chicanery. They argue that the Caverns of Time are actually the most "real" of all the instances in the game. If we go into Utgarde Pinnacle, for example, and murder King Ymiron, there's no reason why he should be in there again the next time we head in. And yet he is -- we can go in and murder him time and time again, doing the same thing, and getting loot every single time. But in CoT, there's a logical explanation for why the instances are always the same: to the people we're encountering in the instances, it's the first time we've met them. From the outside world, the CoT instances may seem strange (the first time I was in Durnholde, we wiped with Thrall, and I jokingly checked with my guild to see if Thrall was still standing in Orgrimmar, alive and well -- he was), but inside the continuity of those instances, they work.

Of course, we do still get different loot from it every time, as the MC post notices. But it is quite a thought: even though the Caverns of Time instances are the ones in the game that seem to least need us messing around in there, they also might just be the most logical.

Tom Chilton talks about 3.2 and the future of World of Warcraft - Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:00:00 ESTVideogamer.com has a nice long interview with World of Warcraft Producer Tom Chilton about everything from patch 3.2 and the Argent Tournament to the future of the game at large. They caught up with him at the Warcraft Regional Finals 2009 tournament in Germany this past week, and in part one, he talks about the upcoming patch and what Blizzard is expecting to get out of it. He says the Isle of Conquest battleground is their most "epic-feeling" instanced PvP setting since Alterac Valley, and that they want it to feel nuts, with players fighting each other via air and land. He also mentions Arena, and says that it was originally designed to be "a fun side PvP activity" that they went a little overboard with during Burning Crusade. Finally, he talks about twinks, and says that neither Blizzard nor twinks, apparently, want to see other players crushed by those who have the time or money to max out their low level characters. Even twinks, says Chilton, want to see competition against each other, and the option to turn XP off will let them do that. I'm not sure I agree with that last one -- many twinks seem to beef their characters up just for the chance to lay waste to "normal" players, but Chilton says Blizzard believes otherwise.

The second part of the interview is more general -- he talks a little bit about the next expansion (with the same speculation we've already heard: Gilneas, the Maelstrom, the Emerald Dream), and says that designing a race is tougher on artists, but designing a class is tougher on designers. He admits that because we had a new class in Wrath, it's unlikely we'll see another class so soon in the next expansion, but "not impossible" of course. And he does note that Blizzard tries to "pre-seed" the races before they use them as playable races, so if they are adding in races, chances are we've already seen them (which, you may note, wasn't strictly true with the Draenei in BC). Finally, he talks about the future of Blizzard's MMO in general, and says it's still wide open to them: they plan for the game to last for years, and what they do between now and then, whether that be more expansions, microtransactions, or even a free-to-play model, will have to depend on what they want to do at the time.

Very interesting interview. Chilton doesn't really reveal anything, but you do get the sense that save for a very skeleton plan of one or two years in the future, Blizzard is really playing it fast and loose with World of Warcraft. Even he admits that the game may look very different, depending on how things go, in another four years from now.

When the news broke that patch 3.2 would bring new chest heirlooms, with a stacking +10% XP bonus, one commenter made an interesting suggestion: get heirlooms for your level 80 characters, and bank them until the next expansion. So far between chest and shoulders you've got a +20% bonus to all XP right there, and having some quality equipment always helps the leveling process.

Of course, there's every chance that Blizzard will simply disable current heirlooms for characters past level 80, to prevent precisely this behavior. They've done level-based nerfing before, with items like the Riding Crop and enchants like Crusader.

The whole fate of heirlooms in the next expansion seems pretty nebulous to me, actually; will we need to go back and farm Emblems of Conquest at level 90 to gear up our alts? It's too early to tell. For now I would hold on to any extra badges you might have, but when the next expansion nears, you may be able to make good use of them.

If you do, just hang on -- the donation drive lasts through the 31st of this month, so Brajana has some time to get everything together, and even if you donate now, you'll still be entered for sure. It's always awesome to see the WoW community put its size and power to good use, and this is definitely a worthy cause to support.

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself by contacting our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) -- not-for-profit work only, please.

Getting started can be the most difficult step for WoW newbies and WoW "WarCrafters" alike. Showing your artwork to other people - or even having the gumption to create any in the first place - can be intimidating stuff. Discovering someone who's willing to show you how it's done or even share his creative process represents a major inspirational coup. Swedish WoW player Jonas at wowatar.com is one of those creative wellsprings. He's created a small drawing site filled with WoW-related nuggets that inspire, instruct and delight.

This got somewhat lost in the news shuffle over the holiday weekend, but Blizzard has posted another issue of their extremely irregular Gadgetzan Timesfan-fic-oriented newsletter, for the first time since May 2008. This time around it consists of two pieces of short-form fan fiction, an amusing "classifieds" section, and a slightly half-hearted crossword about the dungeons of WoW.

It's an interesting thing for Blizzard themselves to come out with, as it has been from the start. I really like the idea -- characters from Azeroth report on events in and around their world -- but it could use a little more polish and effort, not to mention a more regular timetable. On the other hand, they're still publishing more regularly than my Illusionary Tactics column. Maybe I should not call this particular kettle black.

Anyway, it's certainly a decent diversion for a few minutes if you're stuck at work or bored at home, so go ahead and check it out.